


He Just Had to Be There

by Diary



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Awkwardness, Bechdel Test Fail, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Interspecies, Introspection, Late Night Conversations, POV Dennis Creevey, POV Male Character, Post-Canon, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Post-Hogwarts, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 00:54:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11817810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diary/pseuds/Diary
Summary: Repost. A look at Dennis Creevey after the war. Complete.





	He Just Had to Be There

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Harry Potter.

“Another?”

“No,” Dennis Creevey answers. “Two's my limit.”

His body and mind disagree, but he pays the tab, grabs his coat, and leaves the tavern.

Within a few minutes, he wonders if he should go back.

Pulling his coat tighter against the cold, dreary weather, he winces as the snow soaks through his thin shoes. His feet quickly numb, and painful, prickling shivers go down his back. Some part of him vaguely remembers once hearing something about a man getting plastered and going out into freezing weather with the drink exacerbating the cold's effects.

He thinks, in the story, the man died.

Unwillingly, his older brother, who never had anything stronger than a butterbeer, comes to mind.

He wonders if it's time to go for his Apparition or driving license.

A cough hacks throughout his body, and he sighs.

Seeing an-all night diner, he goes toward it.

Maybe, he thinks, I'll only catch a cold rather than ending up dead of pneumonia in the middle on an anonymous street.

Losing one son and his wife turned his dad into a helpless drunk; losing his other would probably cause him to do what Mum did.

Inside, he mutters a drying and warming charm and goes to the bar.

The woman tending turns, and he sees without any real shock she's a hag.

Looking at him suspiciously, she says, “This isn't your sort of place, boy. Wizard, by the way you didn't react, but wizards aren't our clientèle.”

“My brother died eight years ago,” Dennis informs her. “I don't know what this neighbourhood is, and I'm not sure how to get home. It's probably freezing outside.”

Making a sound, she says, “Alright, fair enough. I won't serve you any alcohol, but you can have some soup and tea. My granddaughter fought in the war; came home, vomited on-and-off for a week, and could barely leave the toilet.”

“Hogwarts?”

“Slytherin,” she answers. “Still no reaction, boy?”

“I once had a crush on a Slytherin girl. How do you know I wasn't?”

A bowl of soup, a glass of milk, and a cup of tea float over and set down in front of him. “I know a Gryffindor when I see one.”

“Colin, my brother, he was sixteen,” Dennis says. He brings the soup to his mouth. It warms his body and slowly coaxes his tense shoulders to relax. “Did your granddaughter break out of the Slytherin dungeons to fight?”

“She was never in them to begin with,” the hag sighs. “People can say what they will about Slytherins, but most of them are loyal to their own. Some of her housemates helped us flee to Bulgaria when they realised just how bad things were about to get for people like her. But my granddaughter's always been more talented than me and my daughter. She escaped, went back, and fought.”

Dennis remembers all too clearly how utterly suffocated he felt when the body-bind took effect.

Before sneaking out and leaving Dennis unable to even scream for their parents, Colin had been so apologetic and had promised he'd give Dennis all his pocket money for a year and buy him loads of acids pops. Colin's last words to him had been, 'I love you, Dennis.'

The thing was he hadn't wanted to stop Colin.

He'd wanted to go back with him and fight.

Some nagging part of him has always wondered if Colin wasn't as overconfident as he acted. Did his brother make those promises whilst knowing or suspecting he couldn't keep them?

When some officials had come to tell his parents, they'd already taken him to hospital. The doctors were trying to figure out what to make of the boy unable to move at all.

It turned out Colin had left a will underneath his pillow in the boys’ dorm.

Three months later, he’d come home from the store, and a muggle neighbour had insistently held him and refused to let him look as his mother's body was carried out. He'd had his wand, but he was too scared to intentionally use magic against a muggle.

“I'm glad she came back.”

“I'm sorry your brother didn't.”

Often, he wonders if things would have been different if he'd been muggle. He’d learned it was rare for two muggle-borns to happen in one family. When they'd found out about Colin, he'd resolved to love his brother, no matter what. When it was discovered he was, too, he'd been uncontrollable in his excitement.

Maybe, though, if he had been muggle, Colin would have stayed due to thinking he needed to protect his family more than he needed to fight.

Or maybe, he'd have done the same thing.

“Thank you,” he says.

Leaving him to his soup, she starts cleaning the place.

When he finishes, he says, “Let me help you.”

Nodding, she hands him a towel and shows him how to wash glasses. “You have a job, boy?”

“A muggle one,” he answers.

After the war, some of their classmates had talked to him, but he's mostly tried to stay out of the wizarding world. Everyone called Colin a hero, but Dennis still held dreams of receiving pictures from faraway places, watching his brother fall in love, of falling in love himself, going to Colin for advice, which, he'll admit, probably would have done more harm than good, of Mum being alive, and Dad being his attentive self and taking pride in his boys even if he didn't understand Colin's love of photography and Dennis's lack of hobbies of his own.

The boy who always shared his sweets, who happily allowed his little brother to skip after him, this was the hero Dennis knew. He'd known this hero since he was about a year old.

“If you ever want a different one, I'll give you a try,” she says. “I could use a wizard, able to handle hags and the like, around here.”

“Thank you,” he says. “My name's Dennis. Dennis Creevey.”

“Yai Bulstrode.”

He pauses. “Any chance Millicent Bulstrode is your granddaughter?”

Nodding, she studies him. “I assume you had problems with her in the past.”

“Not exactly.”

He remembers how he'd hide in the library and watch her read. He couldn't say why; something about her just struck him. During his second year, he'd been determined to ask her to Yule Ball, even as Colin tried to gently and subtly guide him into seeing all the things wrong with the idea. A housemate of hers, Blaise Zabini, had asked her before he could, and she'd gone with him. During his third year, Colin had gotten permission to take pictures of the Inquisitorial Squad, and he'd given one of her to Dennis.

As far as Dennis knows, he still has the picture buried somewhere in his old school stuff.

“Remember that Slytherin girl I mentioned fancying?”


End file.
